How The Retina MacBook ‘Zebra’ Photo Was Made

One of Apple’s hallmarks is that it says “no” to way more products than it says “yes” to. And this kind of perfection is what also lead photographer Steve Bloom to capture the amazing photo of stampeding zebras which features in the promo shots for the new Retina MacBook Pro.

Not only was he shooting on film while on location in Botswana, he almost missed the shot entirely rather than capture something less than perfect.

Steve tells the whole story over at DP Review. He head just three days before his long-haul flight home, and the conditions were’t good. Farmers had been burning stubble in their fields, and the smoke kept the helicopter Steve had hired grounded for the first day.

The conditions didn’t improve until the day of his departure, so he and the pilot yanked the door off the chopper (shooting through thick windows is a no-no) and waited until air-traffic control opened up and let them take off. Steve:

The clouds momentarily parted to let the morning light in and we found the zebras moving in the swamp. The encounter was brief. The diaphanous light faded quickly; the weather closed in behind us.

And that was it. Now, the amazing photograph has been seen around the world. Persistence, it seems, pays off.